“Remember,” she said, catching Anne by the arm, “I’ve been out to dinner, too.”
The door was opened, not by one of the gorgeous footmen, but by Lydia, handsomer, younger, and wickeder-looking than Élise. “Good for you, Lyd,” whispered Élise; “I’ll do as well by you sometime.” The footman then appeared, and grinned openly when Lydia remarked that as she was passing through the hall she recognized Miss Clavering’s ring and opened the door.
Anne went upstairs, her heart sick within her. As she passed her mother’s door she stopped, and a tremulous voice within called her. She entered and sat awhile on her mother’s elaborate, lace-trimmed bed. Mrs. Clavering, a homely and elderly woman, looked not less homely and elderly because of her surroundings. But not all the splendor of her lace and satin bed could eclipse the genuine goodness, the meekness, the gentleness, in her plain, patient face. She listened eagerly to Anne’s description of the dinner, which was cheerful enough, albeit her heart misgave her cruelly about Élise and Lydia.
When she had finished speaking Mrs. Clavering said, patting Anne’s head with a kind of furtive affection, “I think you know real nice, well-behaved people, my dear, and I wish the other girls”—“gurls” she called them—“were like you.”
At that moment Baskerville and Senator Thorndyke were sitting in Baskerville’s library, discussing a bottle of prime old whiskey and looking at some books from a late auction. Mrs. Thorndyke had driven home, and Senator Thorndyke, preferring to walk, was spending an hour meanwhile in masculine talk unrestrained by the presence of the ladies. The two men were intimate, an intimacy which had originated when Baskerville was a college senior and Thorndyke was on the committee of their Greek-letter society. There was a strong sympathy between them, although Thorndyke was a New Englander of New Englanders and Baskerville a Marylander of Marylanders. Both were lawyers of the old-time, legal-politico sort, both of them scholarly men, both of them independent of popular favor; and both of them, while preaching the purest democracy, were natural aristocrats. They belonged to opposite political parties, but that rather added zest to their friendship. The library in Baskerville’s home, across the garden from Mrs. Luttrell’s, was in the second story and extended the full width of the house. It was essentially a bachelor’s working library, plain, comfortable, well warmed and lighted, and with an engaging touch of shabbiness. A big leather-covered table was in the middle of the room, and under the green light from a student lamp were displayed the books, the whiskey, the water, and the glasses. Baskerville’s mind was not, however, on the books he was showing, but on Anne Clavering, and incidentally on Senator Clavering.
“How do you account for Miss Clavering being the daughter of Senator Clavering?” he asked Thorndyke, as they pulled at their cigars.
“Those things can’t be accounted for, although one sees such strange dissimilarities in families, everywhere and all the time. Miss Clavering is, no doubt, a case of atavism. Somewhere, two or three generations back, there was a strain of refinement and worth in her family, and she inherits from it. But I see something in her of Clavering’s good qualities—because he has some good qualities—courage, for example.”
“Courage—I should think so. Why, the way that man has fought the courts shows the most amazing courage. He is a born litigant, and it is extraordinary how he has managed to use the law to crush his opponents and has escaped being crushed himself. And in trying to follow his turnings and windings in this K. F. R. swindle it is astounding to see how he has contested every step of an illegal transaction until he has got everybody muddled—lawyers, State and Federal courts, and the whole kit of them. As fast as one injunction was vacated he would sue out another. He seems to have brought a separate and distinct lawsuit for every right in every species of property he ever possessed at any time—of all sorts: lands, mines, railways, and corporations. He has pocketed untold millions and has invoked the law to protect him when ninety-nine men out of the hundred would have been fugitives from justice. He is the most difficult scoundrel to catch I ever met—but we will catch him yet.”
“I think you are hot on his trail in the K. F. R. matter,” answered Thorndyke. “I believe myself that when the great exposé is made before the investigating committee it will recommend his expulsion from the Senate, and three-fourths of the senators will support the committee. The legislature is safe, so the party won’t lose a seat; and in any event I don’t believe we can afford to hold on to a man like Clavering after the country knows about him—especially with a presidential campaign coming on within the year. I think, with all his talents, he would not be fitted for public life if he were as honest as he is dishonest. He has no idea, after all his litigation, of sound legal principles, and he is fully persuaded that any man, any court, any legislature, may be bought; and a more dangerous fallacy doesn’t exist for a public man than that. He has never submitted to party discipline and has played politics with every party that has ever made a showing in his state. For all his money, he has never been a contributor to party funds; so I think, making due allowances for the weakness of human nature, that a horrible example will be made of Clavering, and we shall thereby deprive you of an effective party cry in the campaign. You are really doing us a service by your course, because without your unravelling the legal tangle I doubt if anything could have been made out of the K. F. R. frauds. I have no sympathy to waste on Clavering or any of his family that I know of, except Miss Clavering. It will go hard with her.”